As the sun set behind Signal Hill, The Sea Scouts of Hout Bay, wearing full uniform and led by my son Kai, embarked the Esperanza. I put out my wrong right hand to greet them. They had arrived in time for the duty mate, that was me, to strike the flags and turn on the deck lights. "Why do you fly the French flag?" A question from the troop as we did rounds of the ship. “Ah. It can be easily mistaken for the Dutch flag; the colours are the same. The Esperanza is registered in the Netherlands and fly’s the red, white and blue horizontally-striped Dutch flag. Whilst in Cape Town, out of courtesy, we also fly the South African flag from the fore-mast halyard. It’s a maritime tradition to fly flags only in daylight - both flags came down at sunset.

Around the ship we travelled, and on the way we stopped at the bow, to slack on the head-lines, just a little - the ship was bowsed in (the bow pulled toward the quay and the stern a way off). I warned them to stand clear of the old-man (a vertical bit with roller that guides the rope from the winch-drum to the fairlead). They watched and for a moment under the fore-deck floodlights, as I manipulated the large mooring lines, I felt that I was a sailor on stage. We have three headlines holding us in position against the strong SE’ly wind that comes out of no-where - a local anomaly.

Before the scouts disembarked an hour-and-half after sunset I presented Bronwyn Glass, her brother and parents with green Greenpeace sweat-shirts. To each sea scout I gave a flag, 'Defending Our Ocean'. Then, following the right left-hand hand shake (as scouts do), down the gangway, waving their flags, they left the ship.

Mike Mate

With the interior of the accommodation starting to shine from a weeks worth of elbow-grease, Eddie and his deck team tackled the decks and superstructure of the ship, blasting it with copious amounts of fresh water - the salt of the Southern Ocean was washed away. The Esperanza feels lighter and glistens in the sun, a breath of fresh air has swept through and she is nearly ready to go back out to sea again.

Two groups of twenty ‘Ocean Defenders’ from Cape Town paid the ship a visit in the afternoon. Andrew, the web editor and last remaining from the Southern Ocean, joined me in taking everyone on a tour of the ship. We watched the crew video from the first leg of the ‘Defending Our Oceans’ campaign, in the mess room which is sparkly clean. Andrew talked of what he had seen; of how the hunters had drowned a minky that would not die – they harpooned the whale and then hung it by it’s tail, head down in the water.

Last year I became a cyber-activist; having upgraded the family computer to receive high speed internet, through a twisted copper cable. My work station was open and online in November when the opportunity arose to become an ‘Ocean Defender’. “Have any of you looked through the web camera online?” I asked; on reaching the bridge. There was a general nod of acknowledgement - I pointed out the web-cam behind the bridge window; that was focused on a dock-side crane. “ Here with a twist of the hand we can change a cyber-world view,” I turned it to face Table Mountain.

Thanks to one visitor for the Melk Tert, dit was lekker and al die matroos aan boord het dit geniet.

Mike Mate

On 22 November 2005, the Rainbow Warrior sailed into Cape Town harbour with the New Zealand flag cracking in a fresh breeze. Her bow was adorned with the bright rainbow and doves of peace. Above the bridge windows hung a black banner with white lettering that read ‘Nuclear Free Pacific’. Captain Pete Bouquet and I were on the bridge; my first trip on the Warrior but for Pete it was a trip down memory lane.

Back in 1977 the 418-tonne trawler Sir William Hardy had been found for sale on the Isle of Dogs on the opposite side of the river Thames from Greenwich. This 44 metre long vessel had been built in the U.K. in 1955 and then converted to serve as a research vessel. The WWF in Netherlands came up with funding to assist Greenpeace U.K. with the purchase and Pete Bouquet answered the call for volunteers to come down to the dock and help with her transformation into the Rainbow Warrior. Within the Greenpeace archives there is an iconic picture of Pete in a boatswain’s chair hanging off the bow and painting in the white doves of peace nearly thirty years ago.

Eight years later the flag ship, newly converted to carry sails, was bombed by the French secret service whilst alongside in Auckland harbour, New Zealand. Not one but two bombs placed by French divers on the hull brought the peace doves below the water level and lifted the life of photographer Fernando Pereira into the clouds.

In a re-take of history, Pete and I where sailing the old Warrior before the bomb, into the set of a French film production. The fishing vessel, Southern Saint, built in the same year as the Sir William Hardy had been chartered and dressed for the occasion and even the small tug assisting with our mooring had swapped her South African ensign for that of New Zealand. Cameras captured the historical moment from every angle as we drew up to the dock of a Popeye village scene with fishing nets draped over wooden cases and casks stowed one upon another, a set-back of twenty years.

The decks became a bustle of activity with the extras from the movie industry wearing brightly patched bell-bottoms and woolly sweaters moving too and fro between coils of rope and checking knots again and again providing activity for the rolling cameras. Pete and I surveyed the scene from behind the bridge windows. We keep our hair short, wear plain clothes and clearly did not fit into this Greenpeace scene.

Meanwhile back in the real world the Greenpeace flag ship, Rainbow Warrior, the one that replaced the original now resting at the bottom of the sea on the coast of New Zealand, is crossing the South China seas on her way from the Philippines to Thailand. On the same side of the Planet but further south there is a fleet of death dark ships making their way from Japan to the Southern Ocean. They are going to hunt down a thousand whales in the Whale Sanctuary. Somewhere between Africa and Australia, the two largest Greenpeace ships are on their way to intercept the Japanese; they are making good progress and are nearly a week out of Cape Town. Reading from the web log posted under The Expedition on www.oceans.greenpeace.org the crew on board the Esperanza and Arctic Sunrise are being thrown about by the mountainous swells of the Roaring Forties on their way to hunt the hunters.

Thirty school children all dressed in uniform under the direction of Miss Plummer and assisting parents visited the ship. Kai showed them the way; they where all his class mates. On the helicopter pad I told them the story of Greenpeace that begins with E=MC?; about how there was a time in our history where the world was averaging one nuclear test a week and the Canadian air force routinely used pods of Orcas as target practice for their bombers. It was hot and the steel decks radiated their warmth sending us for shelter in the mess room where the children pulled out there packed lunches and had a taste of life on board.

On the bridge I talked of spherical geometry and showed them the sextant we use for measuring the altitude of stars and thereby fix the position of the ship when far from land. There where questions, “What is this for?” one of the children asked pointing to a handle hanging from a wire that leads through the deck head. “Pull it and find out” I said. Eventually three children where hanging from the handle in the wheel house on the bridge. “It may be a little stiff” I exclaimed and walked up to the emergency whistle and gave it a firm tug. There was a resounding blast from the ships fog horn, followed by a cry of alarm from Collin the radio operator who was up the mast working on an antennae. Collin is one of the elders on board the Esperanza and is starting to resemble Robinson Crusoe more and more as his hair reaches down to his shoulders.

Friday 11 November

Sound is carried through water, and perhaps that’s why whales have chosen their environment for they love to sing those long and complicated songs that travel from one side of an Ocean to another. From the mess room where I was seated for lunch I heard a deep rumbling coming up through the ships hull. I jumped up to look out through the port hole and saw the bow of the Greenpeace icebreaker, Arctic Sunrise coming up alongside the Esperanza. All hands rushed up and onto the deck to take the lines and adjust the fenders as the weather torn ship pulled up alongside. She looked worn and beaten, paint stripped off her green hull by the Arctic and Greenland ice; rust setting in to replace it following a five week passage across a storm tossed Atlantic ocean. Tears welled up with my memories of the Antarctic icebergs and the furious fifties of the Southern Ocean through which this aging lady had taken me through six years ago.

All fast on the starboard side of the Esperanza the railings of both ships filled up with crew leaning over for hugs and hand shakes, and the talk of weather and whales. Then as the yellow quarantine flag came down we became as one ship.

Shortly after the Sunrise sailed into Cape Town harbour, the whole city came to a grinding halt. Traffic stopped moving in the streets and shops and restaurants closed their doors. Kai, who had come to visit the ship after school, was caught in an elevator within the Waterfront shopping centre when it happened. South Africa’s nuclear power station, Koeberg, had gone into automatic shut down and centres as far away as the whale capital of Hermanus where effected. Beau, our South African organic food supplier was caught in the grid lock and the butter was melting. How dependent we have become on this highly controversial source of power whilst the Sun shines daily on Table Mountain top.

Three years ago whilst the World Summit on Sustainable Development took place in Johannesburg, the crew of the Esperanza entered into Koeberg Nuclear power station by way of the sea and exposed the vulnerability of its security and the threat imposed by this unsustainable practise. Today hundreds of thousands of people were exposed to the effects of the shutdown.